Wednesday, October 15, 2014

The second nurse to contract Ebola at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has been identified as Amber Jay Vinson, 29, from Akron, Ohio. The nurse will be transferred to the CDC monitored Emory University Hospital in Atlanta later today.

She is set to be flown to Emory which successfully treated Ebola patients, Nancy Writebol and Kent Brantly, in quarantine units with staff specially-trained in infectious diseases. Both patients recovered.

Miss Vinson's stepfather said about Amber;

'Right now she's doing OK. Her temperature is going down. We don't want to do a lot of talking about it now. 'She's OK. The main concern is for her to get better.'

The nurse''s grandmother, Martha Schuler, added that family members had made a mercy dash from their home in Ohio to be with her. Mrs Schuler said:

'I spoke to my son and he said that she works in that hospital and that she was exposed. Amber's mother has flown down to be with her.'

It also emerged on Wednesday that the nurse had traveled on Frontier Airlines flight 1143 from Cleveland, Ohio to Dallas-Fort Worth the day before she was diagnosed. The CDC was asking all 132 passengers who had traveled on the plane to get in touch.

CDC director Dr Tom Frieden said on Wednesday that Miss Vinson ‘should not have traveled on a commercial airline’ while self-monitoring for Ebola symptoms. Though he also noted that Miss Vinson had flown to Ohio before the first nurse with Ebola, 26-year-old Nina Pham, was diagnosed with the virus.

According to CDC guidelines, the nurse should have limited her movements - but Dr Frieden was unclear whether Miss Vinson was actually told not to travel on a plane. He said CDC guidelines would be updated to clarify that air travel should not occur.

In a sign of concern about the Ebola crisis, President Obama canceled trips to New Jersey and Connecticut today for a Cabinet meeting over the outbreak.